November 23, 2008 – Just before they took the stage, I caught up with Japanese rockers Dir en grey for a quick portrait session. Despite a brisk chill in the air and even a little rain, the guys were a bunch of troopers and we knocked it out.
Kyo, Kaoru, Die, Toshiya, and Shinya were all great subjects for the group shots and individuals alike.
These images are copyrighted and I must ask that they are not used for additional artwork or otherwise repurposed. Thanks very much for your understanding and consideration, I hope you enjoy the images.
Group Shots:
Individual Portraits:
Photographer’s Notes:
For the group shots, we used two locations, both just outside of the venue on an adjacent lot. The band’s translator, Nora, was great with helping out when necessary, but I found that the language barrier generally wasn’t a problem at all for directing the shoot. Addressing the band members by name and a few hand gesture to indicate positioning was more than enough for these shots. And of course, Dir en grey have be in the spotlight enough to be pros with stuff like this.
With the individual shots, we just did the shoot near the same spot as we did the first set of group portraits. We didn’t have much time for the whole set, so we wanted to make sure we secured the individual shots before going into the second set of group shots.
It’s funny to note that just like concert photography, I’m always on a time limit with these band portraits, flying to get the shots.
The lighting sets for these shots utilized one to three remote Nikon SB-600 flashes, controlled by a Nikon SB-900 on-camera acting as the commander. The key light for these shots was fired into a 45″ umbrella.
I used the Nikon D3, 24-70mm, and 14-24mm for this shoot.
End Notes:
A huge, huge thanks to Nora for helping coordinate everything, as the shoot wouldn’t have been possible without her.
If you haven’t seen the live set from the band’s performanace, be sure to check those out.
This entry was posted on Sunday, December 7th, 2008 at 9:45 pm and is filed under Portrait Photography and tagged with 2008, die, dir en grey, diru, kaoru, kyo, live, Music Photography, portaits, shinya, toshiya, tour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Welcome to ishootshows.com, the premier site for music photography featuring daily concert coverage, portrait features, and photo advice from professional music photographer Todd Owyoung.
My name is Todd, and I love the rock show. My work has appeared in publications such as Rolling Stone, SPIN, the New York Times, Alternative Press, Metal Hammer, Entertainment Weekly, and Billboard Magazine. I'm available for worldwide travel for editorial and commercial assignments.
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You’re phenomenal, Elsa. I can’t even express how much I appreciate you being so proactive about bringing these things to my attention!
The copy over the image even covers of Shinya’s face!
That’s horrible! I really don’t get why people do that.
She’s also got the unedited version uploaded too
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33623069@N06/3128863402/
This post has where someone used one of your shots to post a macro image. http://community.livejournal.com/jrockhumor/2142519.html
*sigh* They got my pic in there too and never asked for permission, hence how I even noticed.
Hey Elsa: Thank you once again for looking out for me, I will look into this.
Dark Avenger: Thanks for the heads up. I had seen someone post in that group before with another image. I see that just below your request someone was kind enough to request the images be taken down, and linked back here.
Maybe I should make a LJ account just to try and deal with these things. Hopefully the person posting will take care of it, for both our sakes.
Hopefully. I wish certain parts of this fandom would respect copyrights and requests better… but I guess it’s to be expected with such a large fanbase. Getting an LJ just to deal with it might not be a bad idea. If they actually hear from you personally, they might take it more seriously than random fandom people telling them to take it down.
Hey again Todd, Dark Avenger is right getting an LJ might not be a bad idea. That way if the person the posted won’t remove the pictures you could contact one of the community maintainers or the LJ abuse team they usually do a pretty good job.
Another link for you, couple of shots near the bottom in this massive post of Kyo pictures and stupid comments. http://community.livejournal.com/rllysrsphotos/176482.html
The maintainers of this one believe that if you don’t want people to spread pictures around you shouldn’t post them so they might be hard to deal with.
Hey Elsa, thanks as always for the info. I will look into a LJ account, thanks for your thoughts on that.
Still, for all the misuse of the images, I’m still very glad that fans of the band seem to enjoy the shots, as that’s the whole point of sharing them!
Thanks again, Elsa, and to everyone else who has given me a heads up about this stuff.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen them like this…I don’t know what’s the best way to say thank you for these photos…I’ve been a DeG fan for about 10 years already and it’s so rare that I get to see such personal photoshoots,where you see there’s scarce or no photoshopping at all and they all seem to be at ease.I envy you for being able to meet them AND have a photo session with them! But a heartfelt thank you for putting these up,they are great.
B.
oh WOW these pics are just orgasmic xD you know that I mean??
Hey Betty, thanks for the comment, I really appreciate it from such a longtime fan. I was happy to get permission to photograph the band, but now I realize that it was a rare opportunity and feel lucky to have had the chance.
Glad to hear you enjoy the images.
Hey Todd….its been quite sometime now…i was still curious if it will at all be possible to buy prints?
I just saw Dir en grey live and I just had to come back to take another look at these photos. They’re really best photos of them I’ve seen in years.
Is there any chance of getting prints?
kyo is fuken beast man
thank you sooo much!
these photos are amazing!
i love dir en grey, and you captured their spirit
beautifully in these pictures. so much energy.
thank you!